"Ah," said the historian, "that is more strange still; for that which saved him was also to his harm. He is not here. He is—elsewhere."
The little Pilgrim's face grew sad; but then she remembered what she had been told.
"But you know," she said, "that he is coming?"
"I know that our Father will never forsake him, and that everything that is being accomplished in him is well."
"Is it well to suffer? Is it well to live in that dark stormy country? Oh, that they were all here, and happy like you!"
He shook his head a little and said—
"It was a long time before I got here; and as for suffering that matters little. You get experience by it. You are more accomplished and fit for greater work in the end. It is not for nothing that we are permitted to wander: and sometimes one goes to the edge of despair—"
She looked at him with such wondering eyes that he answered her without a word.
"Yes," he said, "I have been there."
And then it seemed to her that there was something in his eyes which she had not remarked before. Not only the great content that was everywhere, but a deeper light, and the air of a judge who knew both good and evil, and could see both sides, and understood all, both to love and to hate.